MY granddaughter arrives out of the airport with the insouciance of one used to travel and familiar with strange tongues and sudden heat. Standing by the car I give a little wave and after just the barest hesitation she waves back then blows a regal kiss, followed by a smile.
Now 18 months old she has only met me twice before but we often ‘meet’ on Face Time. I idly wondered whether I should have held an empty picture frame before me to give her the view she’s used to seeing.
But it seems she has no trouble recognising me and settles in to the car seat pulled from the mountain of luggage that accompanies a baby for a long weekend away.
In preparation for Clementine’s state visit to my humble residence, the gardener has worked overtime to strim, mow and plant.
The cleaner has come twice in the week and my car has had its first valet in six years. A high chair awaits assembly in its box.
The fridge is crammed with all organic foodstuffs plus any possible combination of delicacies her parents are eating these days. (I understand quinoa is so over in London, but it’s just arrived in Lavit so it’s there too in my cupboards.)
I am bizarrely slightly nervous but with an edgy attitude – ready to rip.
My son, who blames Las Molieres and France for all the troubles that have beset me in the last few years, will be eagle eyed in his inspection of both it and me.
Just when I think he has accepted my decision to remain and my inability to fly, he returns over and over to old arguments that both unsettle me and make me question all.
Perhaps it will be different this weekend when all will be centred on the fine featured, pixie-faced blonde who bears our blood.
It does not auger well though that the sky is heavy and grey and a cutting wind has chilled them already. In the London they’ve left behind, unseasonable heat is heading for the record books.
Rural France, with its ramshackle buildings and paint peeling shutters, only looks quaintly charming when the sky above is midnight blue and the sun’s rays wash over in a rising mist of often suffocating warmth.
An unexplained traffic jam for miles turns the 50-minute journey into a two-hour crawl and the child first becomes restless, then bored, then angry at her imprisonment.
Ah, I had forgotten the power of a toddler’s cries, screams and shrieks followed by the heart-rending sobs and sharp little intakes of breath as tears roll slowly down.
Finally she sleeps, exhausted, her face a mixture of fixed outrage and sufferance.
In the jut of the chin and the defiant purse of the lips even in sleep, I see her father and by definition, me. I marvel again at the porcelain pale, pristine, untouched skin, delicately, lightly rouged with robust health.
I look at my own arm next to hers, coarsened by age and sun, veins visibly ugly on the back of the hand, skin loose as I move to stroke her cheek.
Oh how we insult the perfection that was once gifted to us too in our pursuit of life’s pleasures. Or, some of us do.
The last time we met, I read to her as we sat under shade on a terrace overlooking the Bay of Cannes as yachts lay idle awaiting their rich owners back from lunch and the air was heavy with the scent of Bougainvillea and money.
The house, owned by her mother’s family, lies high on the hills above the smaller towns that snake around to Cannes and Nice.
I thought of that as we breasted the hill and LM came into sight, lushly covered, in this month when all hungrily bursts forth and all is perfectly aligned for a few short weeks.
And I felt a rare surge of pride in its bucolic ruggedness. My heart sank when neither parent commented but 24 hours later my son returned as the sun returned and once again he slid into the pleasure of all around him.
There was no need for toys or amusements when Clementine discovered freedom, shovelling stones from the drive down her T-shirt, banging pots and pans on tiled floors, inspecting insects and lizards fleeing before her drunken walk.
She ran and fell down inclines in the park, shoved a questing hand down mole holes, and rapturously shed all clothes, rolling on warm grass.
Sitting like an empress, she commanded her father with imperious hand gestures and cries of "more" to go faster as he pushed her in a wheelbarrow down the road to the horses.
By day’s end, she was as all children should often be….dirty, knees scraped, hungry, happy and ready to sleep in the peace of deep country.
After I dropped them off today as the temperature rose further, I drove back thinking how LM had finally come into her own.
Sure, she had been the scene of many a riotous weekend but hosting a child and letting her run free is surely what every house in the country is ultimately there for.
Well, I’ve decided it is and Clementine most certainly agrees.
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